Veal: Meat from a calf taken from its mother a day after being born. Kept in a small, narrow pen so it cannot move or turn around, grass withheld to prevent natural muscle development. Slaughtered while young.
Foie gras: Fatty liver from force-fed birds. The force feedings sicken the birds they can only hang their heads after the feedings.
Ajumma recently reconnected with a girlfriend who had just completed her MBA and began working at a Fortune 500 company. We decided to have lunch at a place she heard others raving about. Someone told me the place is so popular that you have to call a month ahead for a dinner reservation. Looking at their online menu I found veal and foie gras. I told my friend that I'm opposed to how animals are raised for these foods and suggested we go someplace else. My coworker recommend another establishment that people are dying over, which ALSO ended up serving veal and foie gras. It makes me angry that it's 2010 and A) people are opening new places that serve this shit and B) people my age are helping make these places popular. To top it off, it's been documented that these helpless animals often end up abused while at the slaughterhouses. Last fall the Humane Society of the United States videotaped downed veal calves being shocked at a slaughterhouse in Vermont, and recently filmed baby turkeys being ground up while alive in Minnesota.
